But not a man had been hit by a missile. Only three of the vessels were struck, and those not seriously. It was a very poor exhibition of gunnery.
In the meantime, between the 10th and the 20th, the sailors had established their battery on shore and had arranged to work it as it would have been worked on a ship. So eager were the forces afloat to see service in this battery that the officers for it were chosen by lot. So effective was its work that the enemy, on the 25th, concentrated upon it all the guns that would bear, and the work there became the warmest any man present had ever experienced.
Seeing this, Commodore Perry, who had relieved Conner on the 21st, ordered four vessels into the harbor to divert the attention of the enemy from the battery. Lieutenant Josiah Tattnall was fortunate enough to get command of this little squadron, and with it discretion to go where he pleased. Accordingly he advanced to within eighty yards of the castle and then went still farther in. The fire he drew on his boats was terrific—so terrific, in fact that Commodore Perry, to save the vessels, that seemed doomed to immediate destruction, signalled Tattnall to return; but Tattnall was too busy to look for signals and did not see them. So a small boat had to be sent to bring the intrepid crews away.
While the navy must share some of the honor of the capture of Vera Cruz with the army, it is clear that between the ships and the naval battery ashore the seamen did the main part of the work. It was their battery that made the first and the largest breach in the forts attacked, and at two o’clock on the afternoon of the 25th, every gun in reach of this battery had been silenced. The battery lost four men killed and eight wounded.
Naval Bombardment of Vera Cruz, March, 1847.
From a lithograph published in 1847 by N. Currier.
Perhaps one of the most signal evidences of cool bravery shown by the sailors was when Santa Anna was landed from the American fleet. As the reader will remember, Santa Anna had been President of Mexico earlier in the trouble with the United States, but a revolution had overthrown him. The American Government thought to make a new revolution in Mexico and at the same time get a man in power there who could be bought into making a peace, by aiding Santa Anna to return. Negotiations were opened with him at Havana and some kind of an arrangement made by which he went to the American fleet off Vera Cruz, and it was then proposed to land him with his suite under a flag of truce.
A more dangerous movement for that brave Mexican could not be imagined, for he was outlawed, and any soldier might kill him at sight.
But Lieutenant Josiah Tattnall went ashore with him, and on landing took his arm, and then the two, at the head of the general’s suite, walked up the streets. The throng looked on in silence until a squad of soldiers recognized the old hero and saluted. At that everybody cheered, and Santa Anna was again, practically, master of Mexican affairs. And what was of more importance, he was a patriot first of all, and the Americans soon found they had made a mistake in sending him home.